"What if the football hadn't gone over the wall… What if Hector had never gone looking for it… What if he hadn't kept the dark secret to himself… What if…" (Chapt. 1) Maggot Moon, written by Sally Gardner, is a stunning yet heart wrenching book, talking about a teenage dyslexic boy risking his safety and even his life to expose the truth about a moon landing by the treacherous Motherland. Maggot Moon is a dystopian novel, composed by a hundred short chapters. The writing by the author was beautiful, especially the fascinating development of her characters and the wonderful way she wove the characters' personalities within their actions and thoughts. In Maggot Moon, Standish lives with his grandfather in Zone 7, in a dystopian world ruled by a corrupt government, with the people of the government - the Greenflies using grim methods like torture or violence to keep the people under control. In this environment, Standish starts another day going to …show more content…
The main protagonist, Standish Treadwell, suffers from dyslexia and is bullied because so in school: "Can't read, can't write. Standish Treadwell isn't bright." (Gardner, Chapt. 2) However, Standish has wonderful imagination and incredible will and bravery to attempt what's never been done before, or what seems impossible for him. Standish can overcome fears and challenges partially because "Standish Treadwell isn't bright". Standish and his best friend Hector escapes the cruel reality by dreaming and imagining their perfect "Planet Juniper", and imagining the ice-cream-coloured Cadillacs they will have in the land of Croca Cola. They dream about their spaceship where they will eventually fly to this world until the tragedies of the Motherland rips Standish from those dreams. Hector tells his friend: "I believe the best thing we have is our imagination and you have that in bucketloads." (Gardner, Chapt.